The purpose of super-seed is to allow a content distributor to use a single, relatively low-bandwidth server to efficiently upload its data to a torrent. While some people think super-seed sounds "shiny" and use it on a torrent that's already running well, and I wouldn't mind BitComet's exploiting THEIR stupidity, to tap into the super-seed that's trying to get the torrent running is simply idiotic, and I'll tell you why.

The way super-seed works is it discovers which peers are sharing data the most efficiently, and gives them more data to distribute. When BitComet games super-seed, it induces the seed into thinking that the BitComet peer is very efficient at spreading data. As a result, the peer downloads faster than the rest of the peers, and typically doesn't share that data as efficiently, costing the rest of the peers a lot of download time.

That's fine, but what if there are two BitComet peers sapping data off the super-seed? The seed has to duplicate the effort to send a piece to each BitComet peer, since the BitComet peers typically don't share very well and won't trade much with each other. Each piece one of the peers downloads from the super-seed is a piece that could have been sent to a peer with a fast upload rate which could have, directly or indirectly, sent that data to BOTH BitComet peers soon after it received the data.

This means that, while the bandwidth leeching gives BitComet users more bandwidth from a single, bandwidth-limited seed, when more than one BitComet peer is on a super-seeded torrent it makes their download time LONGER. This is especially true of their new cooperative gaming mode which REQUIRES more than one of their peers to be on that torrent.

So not only is BitComet damaging torrent performance for other downloaders, but they're also doing a disservice to their own users by sapping super-seed bandwidth.

Yes, I know banning their peers from my client is a bit childish. Yes, I know they may retaliate by banning my client; since BitComet users don't upload much, I don't really care. Yes, they may write creative ways around the ban; that's fine with me. I'm just waving my middle finger in their direction.